Here at Air Conditioning Virginia Beach, not only is it my job to help folks out when their heating or cooling systems are not working properly, but to also educate and inform.

I’ll attempt to do that in this section called “recent service calls”.

I may give you lots of warnings about how you can get ripped off and I do not mean to sound as negative about our industry as I do sometimes, but the facts are, you can get scammed very easily into doing unnecessary and costly repairs because you really have no way of telling whether or not you are being lied to.

For example.  I was just out on a call where the customer said the main circuit breaker to their outdoor air conditioning unit, called the condenser by the way, kept tripping whenever they tried to turn on the AC.

Now, when a call like this comes in most guys are drooling at the mouth because it could mean that the compressor is bad.  The compressor is kind of the heart of your system in that it pumps the refrigerant (freon) through the system to cool your home.

The compressor draws a lot of power and if it locks up or shorts out (grounds) it will often trip a breaker.  You can replace a compressor of course but it is a big job and can be very costly because the part is pretty expensive and you have to remove all the freon and put in new when the job is complete.

Many companies will inflate this cost a bit and try and convince you that you might just want to replace the whole unit, especially if it has some age on it.

Now, I will not argue with this recommendation so long as you are given both options and you have not used an inflated price for the compressor replacement. But, what I will say is that many times there is absolutely nothing wrong with your compressor when the main circuit breaker trips… which was exactly the case on this service call.

Take a look at the picture below:

If you look closely at the wires you can see they have melted and are now touching one another.  This of course trips your main breaker to prevent fires in your electrical system.  Thing is though, this compressor was actually wrapped in a sound deadning blanket and there was a cover over the terminals that had to be pried off… not to mention this compressor in located in the center of the condenser and these terminals are not all that easy to get to.

Most guys would have tried to reset the breaker and when it popped off immediately would have suspected (through ignorance or design) that the compressor had an internal short and not gone to the trouble of making their way to thses terminals.  And how would you know any different, right?

Well, thankfully I was there and took the time to check the terminals and was able to replace the wiring.  Another point here while I’m thinking about it.  Sometimes when these terminal connections short out the heat generated will damage the post coming out of the compressor where the connections are made and a typical “spade clip” will no longer slide onto the post properly.

So, if a technician has some type of morals and did think to check the connections before telling you the compressor was bad, he can use this as a reason to say the compressor or unit needs to be replaced and he would be right if there was not something readily available to address this very problem… but there is.

The picture above is of a terminal repair kit and was designed to use on all compressor posts even if the spade connection has been damaged.

It is not fun to install in many cases because you have to pretty much do it upside down with your half your body inside the condensing unit but it can be done and it will save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

After installing the repair kit I checked the amp draw on the compressor, which was fine.  I did recommend a hard start kit which gives the compressor 500 times more torque on start up and dramatically helps extend the life of the compressor and lowers amp draw across the terminals.

All in a days work.  So, lesson learned? If someone says your compressor is shorted out, ask to see the terminal block to verify that it is not just the wiring going to the compressor that is actually shorting out.  If the repair man says that is not necessary you may want to thank twice about believing what else he tells you!